


scars//stars

by hiroshimalovers



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 04:12:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5524979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiroshimalovers/pseuds/hiroshimalovers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>when Poe learns to live with the galaxy, he forgets to learn to live himself</p>
<p>a story in scars</p>
            </blockquote>





	scars//stars

**Author's Note:**

> there are some scenes of violence, and one that could possibly be taken as rape. take care of yourselves  
> yet another study in Poe

There are four scars across Poe’s ribcage. They stand out harsh and pale against his skin, and he doesn’t look at them in the mirror but he is still acutely aware of their existence. He doesn’t think about them. He’s forced to remember none the less. 

 

(when he was seventeen and running across the galaxy, learning, flying, and dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, he fell. When he was a kid, his mom said  _ don’t be reckless with your emotions  _ and Poe took that to mean  _ it’s okay to be reckless with yourself _ . There’s a certain kind of running from the past that makes the heart beat crooked, and a certain kind of sadness that helps to forget. Poe had the kind of reckless sadness felt in the roar of an engine, in the idealistic success, in the dreams of always being something more.

 

_ it’s okay to be reckless with yourself,  _ he tells himself when he flies.  _ it’s okay,  _ but it’s really just a matter of assuming his life is automatically worth less than everyone else’s and that’s how, that’s how he gets caught in the middle of a fight around the corner from the hanger he docks at and works at and it’s a blow to his gut and a blow to his self esteem and  _ it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay.  _ He thinks about his mother, and he can barely move. 

 

The other guy got away. Poe didn’t.

 

When the attacker hits him hard in the mouth, Poe spits out blood and tries to come back up swinging. He’s expecting to hear the whir of the cheap weapons the folks who frequent the streets usually buy, but there’s nothing and then there’s pain, sharp and hot, and he’s not sure if he’s screaming but there are tears leaking down his face, and he’s holding his breath.

 

It stops, and then comes again. He counts.One. Two. Three. Four, and he’s immobilized, laying on the ground, bloody and sad. He hears voices in a language he’s only mildly familiar in and footsteps leading away.  _ it’s okay to be reckless with yourself  _ he thinks. 

 

He always thought he was going to die when doing something a little bit too stupid while flying. He never thought it would be lying on the ground a block away from his commercial ship, and he never thought it would be this painful. He blacks out.

 

He aches when he comes back to, but he stays quiet because the room he’s in smells like dust, and there are voices from the hallway. He doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t know if he wants to. 

 

_ he’s the one _ , a deep male voice says, and Poe exhales slowly. Once, his mom’s friend told him that breathing out was equal to letting go but here, it feels just like an admission of failure and sixty percent of a sign of defeat.

 

_ he has to cooperate first, Tal _ , says a second voice in flat tones, not quite robotic but not quite human either. Fear hangs like a stone in his throat, but he stays silent. 

 

_ we’ll make him,  _ says Tal,  _ we’ll make him. _ Poe chokes back tears)

 

There are four scars across Poe’s knuckles. They match the ones on his ribcage but they’re years apart, instances apart, and he doesn’t -- he tries not to -- thinktalkdream about them either. 

 

(when he was twenty-one and just beginning to learn who he was, he flew a mission all the way out to Serenno, a planet not far from where he grew up on Yavin IV. It’s generally quiet, but he’s in a rotting hanger in a rotting city, so it feels loud in his bones. The early morning light hasn’t yet begun to rise, so he makes sure the door on the trashy storage ship is locked, and lets himself fall into nothingness, into the abyss of sleep, for a moment. 

 

He wakes up when the red sun is a third of the way through the sky and it’s light streams through a hole in the roof of the hanger. There’s banging from outside and he stretches, back aching. He’s too young for this, but it’s just a downside of a job which he almost doesn’t hate.

 

It’s not, it could never be, that he hates flying, he just hates the incessantly anxious buyers and the never pleased sellers, and just. Everyone involved, but he puts up a facade and keeps on going, and when he stands up, his back cracks. His ribs ache. He’s too young for this.

 

A crash comes from outside, and the frame of the ship rattles. Poe opens the door and steps out, looking for the person who should be waiting for him. The only information he has to go on is the name Charal and that she should be meeting him at 0930, and it’s almost time.

 

The clock ticks and his skin tickles in the heat. The cry of winged animals is muffled by the wooden building but Poe listens to them anyway. It reaches 1000 and creeps toward 1200. She’s a no show, and there’s been a group of three large Trandoshans in the bay for the last half an hour. They haven’t been looking for work either, and Poe thinks. It’s time to get out of there. 

 

As he walks out of the room, they approach him, and he thinks  _ maybe I can smile my way out of this _ but he doesn’t. He doesn’t, and they take the supplies and they take a little bit more innocence. When they see the pale white marks on his ribs, one of them hisses,  _ we’ll make you want to forget, and make sure that you cannot.  _ He carves into Poe’s knuckles -- so he’ll see whenever he looks down, whenever he flies -- and Poe cries out and fights back, he’s been fighting back this whole time, but all he’s done is managed to ooze iridescent green blood from one, and momentarily stun another, and they all overpowered him far too quick.

 

It was too fast, too painful, and he lost his delivery. His hand hurts, and as he breathes in, he aches. It’s hot, and his forehead is damp with sweat but in that moment. He feels like the kind of ice that hasn’t melted in ten thousand years, the kind of ice that lends itself to unfeeling, harsh, retaliation. 

 

He doesn’t move)

 

There are three incision scars on Poe’s right knee. They’re the characteristic marks of an ACL tear, and he doesn’t mind them so much. More than many of his others, he thinks they’re as much of a mark of strength as a mark of weakness.

 

(when he was twenty four and running because when isn’t he running, he’s running, he’s fighting, he’s running, he accidentally joined the resistance. It’s a matter of being in the right place at the right time,or maybe the wrong place at the wrong time, and he’s all of a sudden engulfed in the arms of a short women, dark hair, saying  _ thank you. _

 

He’s holding a smoking blaster, because there were stormtroopers and they were shooting at him and her, and a few other civilians in the hanger, so of course he would shoot back. It’s the right thing to do, and while that’s not always his reasoning, he tries.

 

He hugs her back, but he’s sure that more stormtroopers will be back soon because when, when are they ever alone. And sure enough, in moments, there are blasters, and she’s out of his arms with a gun and they tag team it, back to back. 

 

_ I’M JESS,  _ she yells over the gunfire and then the stormtroopers are setting up a machine gun, and it’s a synchronized movement. They run.

 

_ I’m Poe,  _ he pants while they’re running, skidding around a corner to see a group of four shooting desperately at stormtroopers. He and Jess lend their shots to the chaos and for a second, it’s calm. Shots echo in a hallway. The six of them look at each other, and a man with half a beard nods at Jess. Poe wonders what he’s gotten himself into.

 

They stand, catching their breath for a moment, before they’re off.  _ We need to get out of here _ , the bearded man says, and Poe holds his tongue for a second, but scanning the hanger once again, there’s not much for choices, especially with such a group. 

 

_ What about that one?  _ Poe says grimly,  _ it might be our only choice.  _ He’s referring to a G9-Rigger Freighter, used throughout the Clone wars but probably not touched in a hundred years. The one he had flown in, the motors were blown out, but somehow it didn’t look like he was going to finish that job anyway.

 

The twi’lek women with pale purple skin spoke up.  _ I’ve got one bomb left. We can use it as a distraction,  _ and there wasn’t really any other option. She threw the bomb, and they ran.

 

Poe stepped, quick and fast and desperate, and his knee twisted. He could hear the scream ripped out of him and he fell. Surprisingly, Jess stopped, and so did the man with the beard and they. They didn’t leave him. They didn’t leave him, and instead they lifted him up onto the freighter, and with gunshots still ringing in his ears, the ship took off.

 

_ it’s okay to be reckless with yourself,  _ he thinks,  _ i’m okay. _

 

And he’s in pain, but he feels like the sunlight started to leak into his chest again.

 

He’s in pain but for the first time in a long time, he thinks

 

_ i’m okay _ )


End file.
